Friday, 18 June 2010

Maybe I had too much time to mull over my political choices, maybe I read and argued too much recently, maybe emotions take over when the mind receives too many signals… Maybe? Under the spell of all those information I have been bombarded with I changed my mind. The chances of the candidate I was leaning towards to become a president are close to zero, but the polls suggest that another candidate might win on Sunday, if only enough people don’t shrug off the possibility of recurrence of IV RP. So the tactical voting is my ultimate choice.

The feeling that has accompanied me for the last two or three days is fear. I read the best Polish political blog of 2009 and I finally got what I wanted. I have insight into the mindset of who journalists of “Polityka” dubbed “acolyte of Mr Kaczynski”. Other parties cannot boast about such ardent voters, other parties cannot count on support of staunch electorate. Just look at the “couldn’t care less” Poles who cast their votes for PO. They choose Donek, Bronek and others fellows not because PO is a great party, has a plan to turn Poland around, crack down on officialdom, build infrastructure, cut swelling budget deficit, invest in social capital, etc. At least two third of the people who’ll vote for Bronek will, like me, do it just to prevent Mr Kaczynski’s comeback to power. Many of them, like me, are scared.

I do not doubt Poland is the most important for Mr Kaczynski, but the importance of welfare of Poland and its residents might make him block the government’s reform plans. A strong president needs to put his foot down whenever it’s necessary. After all the ones who does not agree with him are not true Poles, legitimate patriots. My experience tells me Mr Kaczynski’s views can be summarised by five words: “a dissenter is a foe”.

Or not necessarily. Another variant is that if Mr Kaczynski wins, he will ease up and tone down the public discourse. The “change” campaign will carry on and the new president will stay mild, warm and ready to cooperate with the government. Meanwhile the good atmosphere will allow PiS to garner more supporters and win the parliamentary elections in 2010. I don’t know who would run the party after Mr Kaczynski has to lay down his membership card and who would become a prime minister then, but I hope they just will not try to tamper with the economy. Am I not going too far ahead???

I thought what “hostile media” wrote after the Smolensk disaster about bloggers who advocate PiS smacked of exaggeration. Now I see I was wrong; the best Polish political blogger and his mates from Polish political blogosphere are well-organised and determined soldiers. I wanted to use also the word “obedient”, but I pressed ‘backspace’ key and deleted it. They are not told what to do, they do it off their own bat, totally voluntarily. My diagnosis of their mindsets is that they have an idea, a clear and coherent vision of Poland. But on the other hand those zealots seem to me dangerous. They don’t try to be objective, to see nor appreciate the point the other side may have. They are glad to put up a fight, to hurl stones, just to win, end justifies the means. If this is how the presidency of Mr Kaczynski is going to look like, it will be a far belated eye-opener for thousands of Poles.

The admiration for the caucus of Mr Kaczynski leaves me speechless. Was the health-care privatisation case a lost cause from the beginning? Did the henchmen of Mr Kaczynski know he would have to apologise? Quite possibly, they wanted to highlight the problem and resort a pristine feeling humans are influenced by – the fear. Many PiS voters are lost in the modern world, so invoking the fear bears fruits…

Or maybe I’m blinkered, narrow-minded, I don’t understand what the damned lies on which Poland is built are, who is appallingly insolent, who laugsh in true Poles’ faces. Maybe I’m manipulated by the forces of evil, the System, the murderers of late president and his wife. If so, name them precisely and persuade why I should change my views.

Keep the faith and go to the polls on Sunday. Vote for a candidate who would be in your opinion the best president of Poland, this is what you should do. On Sunday evening when the silence is over I’ll try to comment on the exit poll.

3 comments:

adthelad
said...

I really like your honesty. I also think I understand your frustration and how one can get into a mindset of fear. The last few days have opened my eyes to the 'zealots' as you describe them and my fear is the direct opposite of yours. In fact I see a creeping zealously concealed under the guise of modern 'values' which is slowly taking us to a time when a Euro-soviet will have children reporting their parents to the authorities for transgressions against the powers that be. A mindset which was being slowly brought into England by Labour and their cronies, and whose ultimate aim is to completely destroy that which Poland holds most dear, namely it's solidarity. This 'zealous solidarity' has to be stamped out as it is people power and there is nothing that is more dangerous than people who do not have a rational morality, nothing more dangerous than those who do not accept the 'goody goody' truth that power is benign and used only for the benefit of the homo-soviet.Now I wouldn't describe myself as one of these 'zealots', and I would never. NEVER vote for Labour or for a 'Socialist' party but I can see a clear distinction here in Poland which would incline me to vote for 'IV RP' rather than for the Euro-Putin RP. Now we can discuss and deliberate as to what is meant by these concepts, and really hope we may do so, because I certainly believe that the 'zealots' as you describe them have much more to fear from the modern mindset than you have from theirs.Pozdrawiam,A

Adam, I really appreciate you notice what I'd rather call straightforwardness.

I don't think I'm frustrated, my fear slowly wears off and I'll surely come to terms with the result of the election, for one of us it will be a bitter pill to swallow, but probably the final battle will be fought on July 4th.

Maybe I'm blind to the detrimantal influence of what you call modern values. Indeed traditional values give way to individualism, but claiming EU is evolving towards the worst patterns from stalinist Soviet Union is still a step too far. As Michael said, there are no labour camps and political prisoners in the EU. And I wonder if I'll see a child rewarded for telling on its parents, unless they torment it, that's a different story.

Does the society get with the times, or is it pushed forward by the progressive institutions of the EU?

Tell me, what's the actual evil of the EU? Because a first thing that occurs to me when I think about it is bereaucracy - tones of documents, regulations, decrees, laws, subsidies, payments, contributions, clerks, etc.

The labour camps and violence are one thing, the forced indoctrination and brain washing is another. It's a matter of winning hearts and minds. In the Soviet union it was done one way, in the 'new world order' it's being done in another. Obviously this is a too big a subject to cover in one blog note, one meeting or one exchange of views. I'll permit myself to send you a few films, articles etc in the future for you to dwell on and digest. Then we should talk :) I'm not saying I'll convince you of anything but I might learn something and visa versa :)

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Written by a more-or-less anonymous Polish student, PES can be a daunting read for the generally attention-deficient blog reader, but it’s worth the effort. The bloke refuses to compromise and will hit you with 2,000 words about Polish corruption if he feels it’s needed. The fact that he makes the effort to do all this in English leaves me in awe.